by Paul Watkins
Kelley looked in his wallet, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and stuffed it in my hand. ‘Buy a case from the bartender at Mary’s. He won’t card you and he’ll sell it to you cheap. Use the change to have your coffee break.’ Then he leaned close and whispered, ‘I can’t even walk that far. I feel like hell. I need the beer to soften my hangover. Make sure it’s light beer. Please.’
I sat in my window seat at the café, reading a paper and wishing Emily would stop by. The coffee made my nerves chatter.
Then with a case of beer held against my ribs and freezing them, I walked back to our boat. The asphalt already felt hot from the sun.
The crew was repairing a dredge.
I shielded my eyes from the welding torch.
Nelson stopped welding, lifted the heat visor from his face and stared at me. All of them stared at me.
I set down the beer, looking at each of them in turn.
‘What’s the matter?’ My nerves still squabbled from the coffee.
‘Gil wants a word with you.’ Howard unhooked a can from the webbing of a six-pack.
‘A word about what? What did I do?’ I jerked my hands up, wanting an answer.
‘He just wants a word, Pfeif.’ Howard turned back to the dredge.
They all returned to their work and now none of them looked at me.
‘The lobster!’ I shouted as I walked into the galley. ‘I’ll buy a new one! I wasn’t just going to steal your lobster, Gil!’
He sat under the beer clock, drinking iced tea from his blue plastic cup. ‘What are you doing inside?’
‘Howard said you wanted to talk with me.’ My palms were sweating. ‘I ate the lobster and I’m sorry. I’ll buy a new one.’
‘Howard told you to come in here?’ No expression showed on his face.
Franklin giggled over by the stove.
Gil turned to him. ‘Shut up, Franklin.’
‘So they were kidding me?’ I stood up to leave.
‘No. They weren’t kidding you. I’m kidding you.’ He smiled and held out his cup. ‘Want some iced tea?’
‘Are you mad because I ate the lobster?’
‘I was going to eat that for breakfast, but that’s not why I called you in here.’
‘I’ll buy a new one from Gunther’s. I promise.’
‘Never mind about the damn lobster. I want you to stay on shore this trip.’
‘Why?’ The word dragged out of my mouth.
‘I’m not going to give you a reason right now. I just want you to know that your job is safe and you can work on the boat again as soon as we get back. I’ll even advance you some money if you need it for the next week or so.’ He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a wallet. ‘You need a loan?’
‘Am I fired?’ I smoothed sweat from my hands on to the roughness of my jeans.
‘I’m trying to tell you your job is safe. You just can’t come out with us this time.’ He put his wallet away, the fat black fist of leather stuffed with bills.
‘I deserve an explanation, at least.’ For the first time since I walked in, I took my gaze away from his eyes. ‘Don’t I? I do!’
‘That’s too bad. Now go home and take a break and I’ll get Kelley to call you the day we get in. It’s just the way it is, Pfeif. Just keep nice and quiet and rest easy at home.’
Outside, the crew had stopped work and were drinking the beer. Nelson sat with the welding torch across his knee, the visor pulled up to his forehead. It looked like the bill of a huge duck.
They eyed me when I walked on deck. Kelley threw me a beer. I caught it and set it down, not wanting to drink. I had nothing to say to them. They were all in on it. I didn’t understand and I got no explanation and now I was pissed off.
Kelley followed me up the dock road to Severn Street. He finished his beer and dropped the can in one of Sabatini’s orange parking barrels. ‘Gil’s only looking out for you, Pfeif.’
I stopped, thinking of something to say, then decided that he didn’t deserve an answer. They were blaming the flipped dredges on me. They were getting rid of the odd man on the crew, telling me my job was safe in case they decided to keep me on. But now they were testing out whether they could get along without me. Or worse, they didn’t like my company. I knew these things would be rattling through my head all week.
‘I swear you’ll get your job back, Pfeif.’
‘Then give me my job now! I’m ready to go out now. I’m all set to go! I bought new gloves and new boots and a new toothbrush and I’m all geared up to leave. What kind of a joke are you pulling on me?’
‘Quiet down.’ He held up his hand. ‘There’s a reason, but Gil asked us not to tell you for your own good.’
‘So don’t tell me. Do what you’re told. I just think it’s a cheap shot, kicking me off the crew for no reason you have the guts to tell me about.’
‘All right.’ He smiled a sarcastic smile, took hold of my arm at the elbow and led me over toward the empty refrigeration trucks that Sabatini used to transport the catches up to Boston or down to New York. Kelley made me climb into the back of a truck and then walked me along the damp metal corridor to the end. We crouched down in the gloom. The place smelled of detergent. ‘Now don’t let Gil or anyone else know that I told you or we’ll probably both lose our jobs. All right?’ He gripped the joint of my wrist and shook it. He talked in a whisper, which rasped out of his throat. ‘We have a special job this time, a job that will make us a great deal of money if it goes right. That’s the thing, though. If. If it goes wrong we are all in hell. Except you.’
I suddenly realised what he was talking about. ‘You’re going out to run drugs.’ I sat back against the wall of the truck. ‘You sons of bitches are running drugs.’
‘We’re picking up some stuff from a beach in Maine and we’re dropping it off someplace in New Jersey. On the way out and on the way back we’re going to fish.’
‘How often does Gil do this? Have you done this before?’ I looked at the brightness at the end of the truck, where it opened on to the scrap heap of Sabatini’s dockyard. It was a place where old shreds of net lay piled on broken dredges and lobster-pots. People came here to buy joints from a thin black man named Stevens, who wore sunglasses even at night.
‘I never have, but Gil has and so have the others. It’s not a regular thing. He just has friends who know what they’re doing and who make him an offer once a year or once every other year. Alls I know is that it’s going to happen, and Gil and the rest of us decided that you were too young and wouldn’t know what you were getting into. I said I didn’t think you’d want to come even if he offered you a place.’
‘Aren’t you afraid? I’m always reading about fishing boats getting caught running drugs.’
‘You read about the tiny fraction that get caught. How the hell do you think most of the stuff gets up north? The Coast Guard searches ships coming up from the South. They searched Gil’s when he motored up from Virginia. So the way people get through with the stuff is they fly it up north, land it in places like Maine, then ship it down to Long Island and New Jersey and it gets distributed from there. You see how it works? Pfeif, it’s so much money that I can’t afford to turn the offer down. If Gil doesn’t do it, someone else sure as hell will. I can cover all my old debts and get back to paying off the boat.’
‘And what do you get if you’re caught?’ The nervousness in me travelled from my stomach to my throat. It pulsed against the muscles in my neck.
Kelley laughed and looked at the floor. Then he looked up and was no longer laughing. ‘Ten years, maybe. Tops. Probably get off after four. People get out after three sometimes. Gil wouldn’t. Gil’d be there for a while longer, but that’s his business. He’s raking in a lot more money than the rest of us because the risk is that much greater for him.’
‘You don’t give a shit what you’re doing as long as it brings in the money, do you?’ The cold of the truck fanned goosebumps along my arms.
Kelley smoothed his hands
over his face. ‘I figure I’m taking enough chances out here as it is.’
I stood and helped him to his feet. ‘What the hell am I supposed to do when you and everyone on that boat gets put away?’
‘Be glad you weren’t with us. Don’t give me a hard time, Pfeif. You’re too young and you haven’t seen enough to be giving me a hard time about something like this.’
‘Give me a call when you get in.’ I started walking towards the end of the truck.
He caught up with me. ‘Sure enough.’ He slapped me on both arms at the same time, then stood back. ‘And keep it dark. If you talk, the wrong person might hear.’
I jumped down into the heat of the dockyard. ‘Ripping off black bass from Gunther is one thing. But you should have drawn the line before this, Kelley.’
‘Enough.’ Kelley clicked his tongue.
Stevens sat on a pile of old netting. His clothes were black. His shoes and his hat and his glasses all were black. He didn’t seem to have any pockets, and I wondered where he kept what he had to sell. He nodded to Kelley. ‘Are you here for me?’
‘Not today, Stevens.’ Kelley tucked in his shirt.
‘Then tomorrow, maybe.’ Stevens picked at a strand of fishnet twine.
Kelley slapped me on the arm again and walked away.
For a second I stared at Stevens. Stevens stared back.
He tapped the toes of his black basketball sneakers together, blank-eyed like a fish in his sunglasses. ‘You want something from me?’
I met Joseph on his way down to the Narrangansett post office with a stack of packaged records. He gave me half the pile. ‘I thought you were out on the water.’
‘I’m not going this time.’ I didn’t expect the records to be as heavy as they were. Joseph had typed the names of the buyers on small white stickers and attached them to the brown wrapping paper. He had a rubber stamp made for the new business. It said ‘World Wide Record Company’ and gave his rented post office box number. Each package was stamped at the top left corner.
‘Did they fire you?’
‘I’m taking a rest. No, that’s not true. They said they didn’t want me to come out this trip.’
‘Sounds like they fired you.’
‘The captain promised me my job when they get back.’
We walked up the post office steps and Joseph paid for the stamps.
On the walk home I told him the truth, that the boat was running drugs.
He didn’t seem very surprised. He mumbled but said nothing else.
I didn’t like his quiet, and wished I hadn’t told him. ‘If you were working on a boat and someone made you an offer like that, would you go?’
It depends on how badly I needed the money.’ He gouged a finger in his ear. ‘Truth is, I’ve thought about breaking the law to get myself out of debt.’
‘What were you going to do?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know exactly. I only opened the possibility to myself if something came along.’
It didn’t surprise me to hear what he said. I may not have known where Kelley would draw the line, but I knew for sure that Joseph didn’t even have a line to draw.
‘I ought to tell you something, James.’ He stopped at the breakwater, jumped it and landed on the low-tide sand. ‘You want to take a walk?’
Surf scudded up the beach and crossed our feet in foam and shreds of seaweed.
Mothers helped their children build sand castles. They slapped down walls against the tide, which filled the moats and took away decorations of shells along the battlements.
A boy and a girl buried another boy up to his neck in the sand. The boy in the sand had a look on his face as if he might have enjoyed the game when it started but wished it was over now. The girl draped seaweed around his neck like a scarf. ‘You bums!’ The buried boy shook his head as tiny shrimp in the seaweed tickled his neck.
I wandered with Joseph to the end of the beach. We were the only ones there. A fast-running stream fed into a salt marsh inland.
Joseph walked into the river and water piled up around his knees, soaking his rolled-up trousers. ‘You may already know what I’m going to tell you.’
I knelt down in the sand, feeling it hot on my shins. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Dad’s been running drugs for years.’ He waited to see what I’d say.
I kept quiet. My guts curdled.
Joseph kept talking. ‘All the time I was in college, he made runs to pay the bills and keep out of debt. He made a better business of that than he ever did of fishing.’
I looked down at my knees.
‘You didn’t know, did you?’ He spoke over the sound of running water.
I shook my head and said very quietly, ‘How could I?’ Then I looked up and barked at him. ‘And how the hell do you know about it?’
‘Dad told me.’
‘So he’s a crook.’ I wished I didn’t have his blood in me. ‘All his talk about hard and honest work and he’s a crook.’
‘He’s a crook all right, but don’t you damn him so fast.’
‘Does Mom know?’ I squinted at him over the water’s shifting light.
‘No.’
‘Why didn’t he tell her?’
‘Because he wanted to keep her away from it as much as he wants to keep us away, He might have quit fishing years ago if the people he dealt with had let him. He made a couple of runs and they wanted him to keep working at it. At first he said no, but then they muscled him and he had to say yes. The thing is that these people, the ones who pay him to pick stuff up and drop it off someplace else, would have no problem at all seeing to it that he had an accident or one of us had an accident, just to keep him in line and keep him working for them. He once told me a story about a New Bedford fisherman named Gulak, who made a run and when the people came back asking him to make another, he told them to fuck off. They asked him again nicely and offered him some more money but he still didn’t want to go. He came back from his next fishing trip and found his wife and kids hanging from barbed wire nooses in his front yard.’ Joseph bent down and studied his reflection in the stream. Then he looked up at me again. ‘That’s what happens as soon as you start dealing with these people. They keep coming back with little favours they want doing, and they pay you less and the favours get bigger until you either have to leave town or do what they say. So he did what they told him to do. That’s why he hates the fishing, why he wants us out of it. At least then if we got mixed up in something, he couldn’t blame himself. I know he’s happy that you want to work inshore, because you’re no use to the people who’ve been screwing him all this time. They only need fishermen who operate offshore. And besides all that, he’s happy you found something you want to do. I’m happy for you too, James. I’m happier for you than I am for myself.’
‘So he’s a crook who got screwed by other crooks.’ The sharp sand dug into my knees.
‘You’re getting it wrong, James.’ He picked a stone from the stream and threw it hard at the water near where I sat.
I saw then how angry I had made him.
He smoothed his hands together, squeezing out drops of water. ‘You shouldn’t hate him for what he did. You should get down on your stupid little knees and thank him. You see’ – he shook his head, eyes narrowed – ‘you stayed in school just long enough to learn about fairness and honesty and decency. But you don’t know yet what that counts for out here. Here!’ He pointed at the ground. ‘I thought maybe you’d have learned some of that from when you got kicked out of college.’
‘Learned some of what?’
‘Learned something about what works, James. Not what should work. You went after that boy with your little sense of schoolboy honour and look where it landed you. But the other guy was smarter. He wanted your job and he got it and at the same time he got rid of you. Think about it.’
‘I think about it too much already.’
‘Now Dad saw what he wanted and he saw what he thought he had to do to get it. He doesn’t want yo
u to know. If he did, he’d have told you about it. He’s still a crook, but he’s also your father and what he did wasn’t for himself.’ Joseph stood in the stream, jangling the change in his pockets. ‘You won’t ever say I told you any of this. Understand? Maybe someday Dad will tell you. Look at me. This is important. Do you understand?’
I stared at the sand and nodded, wondering whether Gil lived under the same pressure as my father, whether people muscled him into doing what they wanted and whether he always had to give in.
Mother hugged us together with her big arms. ‘I’m so pleased to have both my boys home.’ Then she stepped back and held on to our hands, smiling, lower lip bit between her teeth.
I looked at her and thought, you’d forgive him, wouldn’t you? Surely you’d forgive him if you knew.
Twelve
The mailman delivered a package.
It was addressed to me, my name written in heavy black marker on the wrapping.
I sat on the front doorstep and tore off the paper.
Mother wandered through her rose garden, singing to herself and clipping off dead flowers with a scissors.
Beneath the wrapping was a box, half gold and half black, the box for a Leica. It was a brand-new M6 with a built-in light meter.
I opened the box and looked at the shiny camera. It was wrapped in a small plastic bag and cushioned between two pieces of moulded styrofoam. I caught the smell of new steel. Tucked in the side of the box were registration documents and a guarantee. I carefully unfolded the wrapping and looked for some kind of letter, anything to confirm what I was thinking. I knew the camera came from Bartlett. It was the same model as his own.
A picture of Bartlett returned to me. I saw his face, red in the glow of developing lights in the darkroom.
I picked the camera from the styrofoam and weighed it in my hands.
I knew Bartlett was expecting to see me again in the fall. I wondered if he would have said anything about the camera. Perhaps he couldn’t stand the thought of working alongside me in the darkroom for another three years without making some kind of peace. Maybe he thought we could return to being friends.